So-Ra-No-Wo-To – 04

As Kanata continues to struggle with her bugle playing, Noel is having troubles as well with her own work on the tank’s sniper system lens. She thus takes Kanata with her on a trip into town to pick up some items, and they first go to Naomi’s store. There, Kanata sees the dolphin glassware that she first saw back when she had just arrived in town, and it turns out that it was made at a workshop outside town that is on the girls’ list of places to go to on this day. After picking up some more supplies, they run into two of the orphans being taken care of by the church, but the boy hates soldiers because he blames them for what happened to his parents. Kanata and Noel then drive out to the glass workshop, and Kanata meets Carl, the master glassmaker. He’s been trying to help Noel recreate the right optical sensor lens, but they’ve been thus far unsuccessful.

While they’re there, Noel explains to Kanata that she likes machines, but there are times when machines hurt people. She thinks that Takemikazuchi likely killed a lot of people in the past, however Kanata points out that the people who used it are scarier. She compares it to how different horn players can produce different sounds, and she feels that Takemikazuchi is a good tank. Noel then falls asleep, so Kanata talks to Carl and his assistant Maria about her troubles playing her bugle. Using his own glassmaking as an example, Carl makes the point that Kanata might be trying to create the sound by force and that what she should be doing is letting the sound be like it wants. With this in mind, Kanata runs outside and is able to play the morning call as it’s supposed to sound, and she wakes up Noel. This has the side effect of making Noel realize that she can use Kanata to listen to the sound differences between the lens samples to find the right one. They are ultimately successful in finding the right lens, and Noel smiles afterward, the first time that Kureha has seen her do so.

Preview

I’ve been looking forward to a Noel episode for a couple of weeks now, so I really enjoyed this. She’s fun to watch and was very cute at times, but surprisingly enough she wasn’t the main highlight of the episode. Instead the highlight was how Kanata who, with Carl’s help, finally got over her bugle-playing problem in what was a scene full of great atmosphere (both figuratively and literally). What I didn’t understand, however, is this: doesn’t Kanata play a valve-less bugle? And doesn’t Rio play a three-valve trumpet? Isn’t Kanata trying to produce the same sounds and range of notes of that kind of trumpet with her bugle a technically impossible goal? Someone who’s more musically inclined please explain this to me.

Anyway, this episode also had more hints of what happened in the previous era, and I like the balance the series is striking between serious war-and-technology-related stuff and less-serious music, cuteness, and humor. What caught my attention in particular is how Noel and the old lady Naomi seemed to know about a certain something that neither Kanata nor we the audience have been informed of. It makes me think that the girls might be sent to war soon or have to be part of some special operation or something.

Even Noel’s episode was all about Yui. Yui no Oto is going to have to burn down an entire village full of kittens and orphans to make up for the snooze that comes from all of this hackneyed cutesiness. Plus the owl? The true hero of the show? Denied its rightful glory.

The resolution (and even the persistence over the time skip) of Kanata’s musical ineptitude was really dumb. When reaching for a way to convey their philosophy they apparently didn’t care how ridiculous it was. The proposal for solving their optics problem wasn’t any better. They’re giving me brain tumors.

@Omni – As ahelo mentioned, it’s much more difficult for Kanata to play as well as Rio because of her instrument… no buttons or valves. It’s all based on her air support and embouchure (how her mouth is oriented around the bugle’s mouthpiece to produce different overtones). But I don’t think she can produce all the notes and sounds that Rio’s trumpet can, since her bugle doesn’t have any valves (in other words, she is limited to a few note intervals and octaves, which is what a military bugle call consists of anyways). If I’m wrong, point me out, because I don’t play brass instruments.

@omni, like someone else said, the bugle can probs produce those sounds, except to change notes the player has to change how their lips are positioned. so valves are bit like a shortcut i suppose, although they have to change their lips too. otherwise the trumpet would be limited to only 27 notes.

I’ve played both bugle and trumpet. Basically, the bugle can only play the notes where all the valves on the trumpet is in the same position, unless you start messing with the tuning slide like a trombone. The valves basically change the length of the tube the air is vibrating through, changing the notes. You can’t do this with bugles, so you are limited to what you can do with the firmness of your lips and the air coming out of your lungs. Bugle calls are limited to only the notes it can produce, which is why they can be played on both instruments. The more complex songs with a higher number of notes can’t be played on bugles, only on trumpets/similar instruments.

four solid chapters so far yay! The ocean is empty of fish ???!!! Whatever happened in the past was really big and disastrous. As for Kana playing the bulge so fast well Ui is hidding somewhere teaching her :)

Kanata learning to play is a little rushed but its not too implausible. It’s already been shown in early episodes that she has perfect pitch. She was able to recognize notes like D-flat and D-sharp just by listening so she at least has some musical talent. Incidentally, a certain character in K-ON also has perfect pitch…

Also, Rio and Felicia were discussing back in episode 2 about something Kanata doesn’t know. So it seems Kanata is out of the loop of whatever it is.

Well… the notes Kanata played in the end were, I believe(I don’t have perfect pitch)
valveless notes, meaning notes that you don’t need buttons to play. Rio on the other hand was making notes that required valves but like ahelo said “its much harder”. (It just goes hand-in-hand with more experience.)

fragbet: The person your talking about in K-On, is actually pretty bad… her sister and Anzu-nyan are much better than her. Also, perfect pitch is good to have when your a musician,but I think Kanata was just having trouble getting a sound out on her mouthpiece.

Ummm…. also, It would help if Rio was actually shown playing Kanata’s trumpet. Kanata mentioned Rio playing her trumpet to make good sound but we got shown the tank. Either that or I can’t find where Rio was shown playing Kanata’s trumpet in this episode or any other episode…….

I still miss what part of this series is army-like aside from the clothes.
Somehow it’s really bugging me how this dosen’t seem army-like at all… It’s like the army’s a cheap reason to get the girls together and make them fight.

@Zeross
From my judgment, Kanata has being practicing with Rio on playing her bugle properly. So, what I see is that Kanata has the skill to play the bugle right, but how she was playing it was wrong until Carl told her that you shouldn’t force it, but let it just happened. Which is true, anyone has the skill to do something, but if you forced it, you might not be able to do it.

Traditional military calls are designed to be played with a bugle such as taps, Reveille, assembly etc. A trumpet playing the same song doesn’t need its valves other then setting the proper initial pitch to match the bugle. As a bugle can only play certain notes, it is quickly mastered. Kanata’s problem was screwing up the most basic of the basics; in her case trying to play too loud by forcing more air through the trumpet then it can handle. I’d have to fail RIO as an instructor rather then Kanata as this should have been fixed in the first few minutes of hearing her playing. There was no reason for her to have to go out an figure it out on her own like that.

Rather bemused to see that even though the seas are apparently fish-less, that when they spilled the bag of groceries, you could clearly see a couple cans of tuna. :)

At first I had thought that whatever disaster had befallen the Earth was in the not-too-distant past (as in dozens of years), but I’m now getting the feeling that we may be talking on a scale of *hundreds* of years. But no matter – while the whole history is quite interesting and I would like to know more, I don’t think it is really necessary to tell the story (which appears to be based more on the relationship of the girls and how that is evolving) – so if much of the mystery of the past remains a mystery, I’m okay with that.

I’ve played both the trumpet and the bugle, for the last 7 years. Technically, producing such sounds on a standard bugle is impossible, BUT it is possible to produce a fuzzy sound if you have the perfect mouth position on the mouthpiece. You can even play a D or E without pushing valves on the trumpet. It just sounds really fuzzy – even if you’re perfect.

Based on my experience, shortening the length of the air passage from the bore to the bell can give more variation to the sounds you can make with a no valve bugle, however, that makes the sound a lot more shallow.